Damian Garside

LOGICALLY

Logically
I am best described
as non-sequitur

the most
incomplete thing
since Kurt Godel

stuff tunneling through me
breaking
my very own laws
of contradictoriness

this poem
not being entirely
the thing it says

WIND

it’s just the
wind

I am just
the wind

whispering,
howling

telling you
how much
I like
the idea
of nothingness

no voice
no words

no
being

VACUUM CLEANER

there’s Plato

and here’s
a vacuum cleaner

helps you keep
the cave clean
get rid of all
those transcendental
appearances
some
great film director
must
have left
lying around

and here I am
dusting and sweeping
giving the place
a thorough
Spring cleaning

cleaners are always welcome
in every utopia
       just have to lie
about their
poetry
    cannot be afford to
get caught
with a scrap
    about their person

the Republic of Philosophy
has clear ideas
on the nature of text
and how
to determine
what it means

AS THEY SAY

they paid
the ultimate price

got you thinking that
someone lined
you all eleven
             against
a wall
          found a
firing squad
to put them
   you out of your
                        misery

miserable because
you lost the game via
a stupid
mistake

ultimate price;
as they say

DANBOY

Oh how deeply
I regret my impatience!

finding it hard
waiting here for centuries
for a poem
that will
not come

how much better
it would have been
to be
exactly like
my dear friend
Danboy
(or brother, or
brother’s keeper
or
something)

who moves with
such lightning speed
hesitating
for nothing

so fast he moves
between the moments
attains a speed
that cannot be
seen
by God.

SOMETIMES

sometimes
                   less than
    nothing
is an
         actual quantity

sometimes it is a literal
statement of fact
that you
could not be more wrong

sometimes I
desperately need
to shut
out
your erratic energy

that I might respectfully
commune with
the dead poets before me

who did
in their time themselves commune

this a tradition going back
to the
very first poet
at the beginning of time

ESCAPE

hear it
it is

out there
calling you

muffled, shadowy
the voice

nevertheless
you can almost taste it, feel it
the smell
lingering

shape, form
clay in your hands
under
your fingers, responding
to your moulding

by now
      this is a poem
she
    is your poem
    you are her poem

no escape now
chained together

poem poet and Muse

CERTAIN OF IT

was talking about death

and
death talked back
spoke
out of turn

whispered and
shouted

no hooded Bergman Bill
and Ted Last
Action Hero
chess twister figure
standing
before me
to attach to this voice

no death companion or
compadre with
him
either

not a soul crossing back
with iconic death mark

to
proclaim death
as abstract concept or
physicality reality

I looked for death but
death was done
and
dusted

done and gone

pretty certain though
he had made a call

THE OARS DIP

the oars dip into
the water
pushing the boat
down the fjord

such are the propulsion
means of history

something stirred, stirring
here that may
in the deep image of
time
come to fruition, arrive
to embrace me
and confront me

relic
revealed

the sea
itself an ossiary

untold bones down
there already

an every bone a lost
a told story

and amongst these intrepid graveyards
so much rusted metal
which once flashed terribly,
proclaiming itself
as
bright steel

my steel
I find it hard to
bring to memory

as if I could just step into
such a life
live the life of my blood
and extreme legacy

or am I
being too harsh with myself
missing something
not finding
the tell-tale, been
here all this time

I see that Ragnar axe
scything through the air
cleaving
the head off my shoulders

swinging sword of this line
piercing my belly
Ah, yes this
is it
the very
Ppain I feared

Valkyrie here
on schedule it must be said
carrying me up and off
to beloved
beerhall heaven of
forever belligerence

or
insane idea that out there
gliding in stealthily
dragonship
with my name on it

nearing my shore
me to
take
my place

the oars dip
into the water

IN HELL THERE IS NO HUMANITY

in Hell
there is no humanity
nothing collective, shared
or universal

just
Slice N’ Dice
fragmentation
upon fragmentation

but music there is,
if the cacophony of suffering
should ever
set into a rhythm
strike a tune

on its way to achieving
pre-planned and project
managed
levels of production

the eternally tight schedules
that devils like to keep

loving
the massive profits
forever configured
in this
their system of
anti-belief